Mona Lisa Darkening

CHAPTER ONE

It was the first day of spring. It was also the time to Bask, to draw down the silver rays of the moon and let its renewing light seep into us. Us being the Monère, the children of the moon — what I was, what my people. Creatures descended from another planet. We were blessed with supernatural speed, strength, and beauty. As a human-Monère Mixed Blood, the first ever to be a Monère Queen, I had the first two. Missed out on the last one, though. Oh well. Better to be fast and strong, in my opinion, than beautiful. And able to Bask, to draw down our home planet's renewing light and energy and share it with my people. Oh yes, that gift was perhaps the most crucial of all, and the one I was most thankful for. Because without that renewing light, we would live only a hundred years, a human's lifespan instead of the three hundred years our lunar birthright gifted us.

If you asked my people, I think they'd take the ability to Bask over their Queen being a raving beauty any day. Or rather night. As a people descended from the moon, we were children of darkness. When the sun set, that was when our day began. Then again, maybe you shouldn't ask my people, because even though my looks were average — not hideous, but definitely not beauty queen material either — they treated me as if I were a raving beauty. The men, at least. The men who were my lovers.

Under the moonlit shadows of the darkened night, I glanced at two of them there by my side. Amber, my rugged Warrior Lord, who loomed a head taller than other men. Whose great strength lay not just in the heavy muscles roping his massive body, but also in the love and devotion gleaming from his dark blue eyes. That — the pull of emotions in him — weakened me more than his obvious and splendid body strength, physically swayed me toward him before I caught myself. Not yet, I thought, but soon… soon.

Beside him stood Dontaine, my master at arms, my other lover. Blond, fair of face and body, a sumptuous feast to the eyes. Whereas Amber looked like a harsh god of war, Dontaine was like a Greek statue — a Greek god. A living Adonis with sun-kissed hair, splendid green eyes, and a body any woman would want to worship with her hands, her tongue, her mouth… any part of her body. He, too, looked at me with love, though I don't know why. Out of all my lovers, he was the one I rejected the most. The one I used the most. Used literally for blood.

It was an odd night, a special night — the vernal equinox. Aequus Nox, which meant equal night. When day and night were of equal length, and the sun crossed not only the Earth's equator, but the celestial equator as well. Even more special, it was one of the rare times when the full moon coincided with the first day of spring, the season of renewal. Perhaps that was what was causing this strange restlessness within me — a skittishness, a feeling of something not quite right. Spring fever likely.

My people were gathered around me, and I recognized more of their faces now, recalled their names. Intricate, interweaving strings bound us all together, and I was slowly learning the many loops and circles. I'd worried over that, my lack of connection to my people, over four hundred of them. But like many things in life, names and familiarity with the people behind the names came slowly with time, and hopefully — thankfully — I would have plenty of that. Time.

I had survived to see another full moon emerge in its brilliant round glory. Quite an achievement, tainted as I was with demon darkness. If the whims of fate had swung another way, I would have been dead by now, killed by Prince Halcyon, the ruler of the demon dead realm. Instead I was his lady, his mate — the High Lady of Hell.

And where was my Demon Prince? Presiding over his people in that other distant realm, Hell, while I presided over mine here in the living realm. I was missing the festivities of Aequus Nox, one of the big demon holidays. At least that was how it sounded to me when Halcyon had explained it. Were it not the full moon, the time when we Basked, I would be down there with Halcyon, mixing and mingling and being introduced to his people. A daunting thought because his people had fangs and drank blood — my blood if they had the chance. But then, so did I. Have fangs and drink blood, that is.

I was a human-Monère Mixed Blood Queen with demon dead essence residing in my living being. Quite a tongue twister and mind bender. The poetic term for my condition was Damanten, demon living. A rare state of being because most of my kind had been slaughtered as soon as they were made, usually by the demons whom those very unwise Monères had blood raped because, alas, that was what sparked our living dead state. Why would they do that, you might ask — drink a demon's blood? Because it gained them a demon's strength, which was even greater than a Full Blood Monère's. But, shhh, don't tell anyone that, it's a secret. A secret that demons would kill — and have killed — to protect.

The downside, and there's always one, was the physical manifestations that occurred along with that stolen power. It was pretty hard to hide what you had done — what you had become — when you started sprouting fangs. Now don't get me wrong. Fangs are no stranger to the Monère. Lots of us had them. But only in our animal-shifted forms. Not in our human forms. Of course, my fang flashing happened only when the niggling presence of another demon triggered the demon essence in me. Then wham! It was like turning into the Incredible Hulk. Only instead of growing green and muscle-bound and horrendously ugly, my teeth morphed into fangs, my nails sharpened into dagger points, and I had the uncontrollable urge to suck down blood, any which way, any damn how. Pretty hard to keep hidden a powerful urge that almost takes you completely over until you've satisfied that hunger with a sip or two of blood. By the time you've gained back your control, the gig's pretty much up.

Halcyon had come up with an even better idea. Don't try to hide it. Simply make them think it had occurred for another reason, hence my official recognition as Halcyon's mate. When I finally manifested my demon traits in front of Monère witnesses (those that tattled, which was bound to occur someday soon), they would think that I was becoming what I was becoming because I'd been contaminated by my demon lover through sex. Sex, after all, was how Monère usually shared and acquired gifts and power. And since such a relationship had never occurred before — a demon taking a Monère mate — all would blame it on that. And perhaps on the fact that I'd been down to Hell a time or two.

The real cause of this all, though, was the former Queen of this Louisiana territory, Mona Louisa. She'd swallowed down Halcyon's blood, and I in turn had sucked her light and demon-tainted essence into me. That was another secret, what I could do, Mortal Draining. It made me feel guilty that the blame would be placed on the wrong person, on Halcyon instead of me and that former bitch Queen that no longer existed, except sometimes in me. Mona Louisa was dead but not entirely gone. I felt her occasionally in my dreams.

As a vulture in her other form, she'd been able to fly, and sometimes I dreamed of soaring through the sky, of smelling death and rotting, decaying flesh down below, carrion. Even more odd, outside of dreams, in my waking state, in my demon awakening state, my eyes changed from my normal brown to a cool crystal blue — Mona Louisa's eyes. A creepy thing, that.

I shrugged away my morbid thoughts and concentrated on the here and now: the full moon riding like a giant beacon of light above us, and my people waiting expectantly for me to draw down its life-extending rays. There was no real science to it. I just opened myself — best way to describe it. Every child of the moon felt that distinct pull when the moon came into its full and ripe roundness. It was like an invisible, tugging rope reaching down to try to open up a door inside of you. I simply stopped resisting and let whatever was being pulled inside of me flip open and become just a conduit… a conduit of lunar light. It shone down on me now like a spotlight, filled me up, filled me to bursting, then overflowed out from me.

Little butterflies of light flittered down from the heavens, swooped into me and spilled out like a cresting tide, washing over my people, darting into them, bowing their backs, lighting them up like flickering candles set aflame. We shone brilliantly for a long spun-out moment in time until that lunar light was swallowed and absorbed into us. Until we no longer glowed and skin became simply skin once more, not incandescent light, incandescent energy.

The last two times I'd done this, the only two times I'd done this, that was it. Over. Finis. Not so this time. This time was different. This time something hazed my vision. Something hazed the moon, actually, because that was what I was looking at.

Like a veil being thrown across its bright surface, a shimmering darkness swept across the moon like spilling ink, blocking out the light like an eclipse, only faster, much faster. It occurred in the blink of an eye, so fast that I almost doubted what I was seeing. Would have doubted it had I not felt it as well — a weight like a descending hand reaching down to cover me. Not that gentle tugging sensation but something much more heavy and forceful.

My people cried out in alarm and I could do nothing to stop it or respond to them as a black power slammed into me, closed like a gripping hand about me… and swallowed me down into a dark and fathomless void.